Making of Comedy Action | Choreography & Direction Notes
Forewords: Welcome to the breakdown of the Demo-reel where you can take a peek behind the curtains; the reasons and thought processes behind the 6 pieces.
Before anything else, thank you for watching this thing that I have been working on with this team of amazing talents, and being interested enough to come to this platform and reading further about it. Many thanks!
There were a few things we wanted to achieve.
First, I wanted to choreograph each genre unique from the others, and more than that, to have each one look cinematic-ally and sound distinct. To feel as if it had been done entirely by different creative teams on separate productions sets. Just like how an actor might pride himself in having range, I wanted to see how far I could stretch my ‘fight designer’s range’ so to speak.
Second, we were looking to offer the genres that are most relevant and usable for the local productions. These genres were chosen on 2 basis.
Either one, it was one that we had previously been asked to do quite a bit already. Or two, that it was something that I’m personally interested in exploring, and that I feel is relevant but yet to be fully explored locally possibly because no one was offering that kind of action design thus far.
And I hoped to offer a demonstration of ability to deliver these genres on a quality of execution that is at the very least acceptable on a market level despite this project being produced with less than a shoestring budget.
And if I were to be ambitious, be able to offer something new and yet to be seen locally. I hope at least.
I’ll let you be the judge of that, and I can only hope it lives up to expectations.
First Genre: Comedy Action | Peps Goh Fight Design
Screen Time Duration: 1 min 1 sec
Shoot Duration: 3 hours 30 mins
Shoot Date: 8th October 2019
Director of Photography (D.O.P): Shian Wen
Stunt Assistant: Kasimir Poh Cieslak
Cast: Tiffany Yong & Peps Goh
Music Composer: John Paul Balthasar Kwan
Location: Lady Wu
Choreography Notes for Comedy Action Genre:
When I designed this sequence, the main limitation I imposed upon it was to make sure that it was a piece that would be appropriate for commercial use. We’ve had worked on a couple of TVCs that had requested for an action sequence with a generally comedic tone, and more importantly with minimal violence.
Completely understandable, we can’t have people aggressively punching the lights out of each other in a family friendly commercial.
And that moment when the audio cord gets unplugged and the music kicks in, was something I really enjoyed doing. It’s a bit of fun visual comedy, but also a great way to pull the audience into the mood of the piece really quickly.
That’s really important in commercial pieces where you have a very limited runtime, and that’s why this is also the shortest genre in this whole piece.
I placed this comedy piece in the front for 2 reasons:
First, it was great to have the first piece kick the music in like that.
Second, it is to ease viewers that aren’t fond of violence in with the sequence with the least amount of it. From here on out it only gets grittier.
Direction Notes for Comedy Action Genre:
We really took our time with this one. It was the very first that we shot, and so we took our time to ease into our working synergy.
The shooting space within the bar was the tightest space I’ve worked within ever, and so we had to come up with creative ways to work around the space and get the shots we needed.
We shot on a skeleton crew, 1 D.O.P manning the camera, and only 1 assistant helping with the lighting and set. It was in the afternoon and the light was bleeding in from a floor to ceiling glass, it was a real challenge to light the scene.
It was in many ways a warm up, and feeling our way through the creative direction. The cinematography of this one was rather uninspired if I do say so myself, from here on out the cinematic decisions begins to get clearer.
Full Video by Peps Goh Fight Design
The comedy action genre is part 1 of the 6 genres. Here’s the full video for your viewing.
Menu: 00:12 – Comedy | 01:00 – Sport | 04:05 – Heroine | 05:22 – Dramatic | 07:40 – Oriental | 11:02 – Crime
P.S. Click on the above link to check out each genre’s choreography and direction notes. If you have any thoughts about my choreography works, feel free to leave your comment here or email me!
